A Sollemnitate Epiphaniæ

It's one of my favorite little spells, this last bit of the Christmas season following Epiphany. In the States, with Epiphany celebrated on a Sunday, you get a week of it. Here in Italy, where Epiphany is still celebrated on the traditional sixth of January, you get from zero days to a week in between Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord, depending on how things fall.

St. Peter Chrysologus in the Office of Readings today: "In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us."

The Lord's birth is after all something fairly secret; he is born away from home, in an obscure place, to poor parents, to a small people. In the same way the birth of the presence of God within us always has some sense of secret, of an intimacy not easily communicated to others, of something precious and utterly personal.

But secret doesn't mean private. Or what is born in secret the Holy Spirit doesn't mean to remain private. And thus we come to Epiphany, to the Magi. In the same way, the graces that the Holy Spirit conceives in our lives are not only for us, but for offering in service and in helps to the salvation of others. In this way the Holy Spirit conceives us as Christ-ians, those who are in Christ, those who become the members of Christ and instruments of his saving work and his peace.

In the Magi is the first public revelation that Jesus Christ is the God of all, the King of the Universe, as we celebrate him at the other end of the liturgical year. They are the forerunners of all of us who are not descended from the patriarchs by blood, but have been grafted into the "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16) in Christ. They are the patron saints of all who surrender to the truth that all human knowledge, all true created wisdom, lead to Christ.

In Christ, all people have been called, invited into the promises made to Abraham. Christ is the beginning of the new creation, his birth a decisive break with the old creation corrupted by sin. This is why he is born of the Virgin, for his birth is a break with the generation of human history. And this is why her Immaculate Conception is the first light of the new creation which dawns in Jesus Christ.

In surrendering the death that is our sin into his death on the cross in our baptism, we have risen again as citizens of the new creation.

Gaudens Gaudebo

I was relieved yesterday by the resolution of a liturgical dubium that had been troubling me. Everyone was acting as if today, December 8, was going to be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception when it seemed to me that it should be the Second Sunday of Advent. After all, consulting the 'table of liturgical days' in the front of your breviary or missal clearly reveals that a Sunday of Advent enjoys precedence over almost everything, including solemnities of Our Lady.

Ad Orientem

Whatever you want to think about ad orientem as a liturgical tradition, you have to admit that it's a concept well-embedded in the critical vocabulary of Christian spirituality.

From the De mysteriis of St. Ambrose in the Office of Readings today, on the rites of baptism:

"You entered to discern your adversary whom you thought to renounce and you turned toward the east [ad orientem]: for the one who renounces the devil, being converted to Christ, discerns Christ by a direct gaze."

Conversion turns us around; after discerning the pointlessness and misery of the false promises of the world, the flesh, and the devil, we turn around and face east, toward the dawn of the new creation that is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

aliquantulum quiescit

There are about thirty friars assigned to the house where I live. Most of them are priests. Many of them live itinerant lives in their service to the Order, so at any given moment two-thirds or so of the group might be at home. This means that as a priest one gets to be principal celebrant only once or twice a month. I really look forward to it, especially for the particular circumstances of Holy Communion.

After the Behold the Lamb of God...(the phrasing of which is curiously inverted in Italian, i.e. it goes, first, Blessed are...and then Behold...) the concelebrants begin to approach the front of the altar, where the acolyte has already placed the paten and chalices for them. Given that this procession of the concelebrants takes a few minutes, the principal celebrant is left with all the time he could want in receiving Holy Communion. I really appreciate it. One can even observe the brief period of meditation prescribed in the Extraordinary Form after receiving the Host and before receiving the Precious Blood. Tridentine accretion or 'mutual enrichment'? I don't know...but the great thing is that nobody else is paying you any mind such that he might render an opinion.

I just love the stress-free nature of the moment, the chance to receive Holy Communion in total peace. No worried temptation to look out of the corner of your eye to make sure the full complement of EMsoHC has assembled, no anxiety over whether you will soon find out that you will be expected to engage in some bizarre 'local custom' or illicit Communion Rite procedure.

As I received Holy Communion today, the gospel came back to me. (Luke 9:11b-17) I knew myself as one of those tired faces in the crowd, finding myself in the 'deserted place' of this world--and is if that weren't bad enough, finding myself as the 'deserted place' of my own soul, my own prayer and devotion having been made a desert by my negligence and sin. But it was precisely for me and all my brother and sister miserable sinners that Jesus Christ gave himself as bread to the Twelve, that they might give him to us. And it is in just this way that the bread that was more than enough for the hungry crowd, passed on by the apostolic Churches down to today, comes even to me.

totus per eam cursus diei ac noctis consecretur

At breakfast this morning I got into an interesting conversation on the broad variety of practice in the Order regarding the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours in common. For example, in my province it's pretty standard to pray just the hinge hours, Morning and Evening Prayer, in common. Here in the Curia, however, we also pray Midday Prayer together. In the house where I stayed over last summer, we also often prayed the Office of Readings in common. I have to say I didn't really care for it, as accustomed as I am to pausing on interesting phrases and taking as much time as I want to reflect between the readings and responsories.

So for me the move to Rome has meant praying more of the Liturgy of the Hours in common. For the brother with whom I was talking, however, it had meant less; in his province it was normal to pray the entire cycle of the Hours in common each and every day.

Regarding the contrast, he had an interesting comment, which went something like this: 'If the brothers pray the minimum of the Hours in common, the danger is that they will never think of the other Hours, or because of doing the least allowed they will begin to see the liturgy as less of a value. On the other hand, if the brothers pray all the Hours in common, it can happen that they never learn to think of praying their breviary on their own, as if they had no individual responsibility for their prayer.'

A thoughtful comment, I thought. As much as I hate the term, is the answer 'balance'?

Noctu vel Summo Mane

It's the end of December. I remember coming here to Italy at the end of May, so that means I've been here seven months. It also means that--according to my interpretation of the letter accompanying my obedience--I have completed more than half of the year-long probationary period that either begins or constitutes this assignment, depending.

I have been careful not to try very hard so far; instead I have tried to execute the assignment with the same incomplete commitment and inconsistent sense of responsibility--alternating between scrupulous and disinterested--that would seem continuous with my performance in the past. Such only seems fair to those friars whom I presume will make an evaluation at the end of this privileged season in my religious life.

Nevertheless, such mea maxima culpas and/or rationalizations (weeds and wheat we are) aren't the point of this post, but something far more glorious. The point of the post is to share that it has taken all of these seven months in Italy to learn at last how one of the most wonderful bits of the jargon of religious life is said in Italian.

"Morning Prayer is in private" is "preghiera del mattino individuale."

So now you know, thanks to the curious brand of perseverance which I have been granted by the Lord. Use it in good health.

Apis Mater

This little candle nub used to be about two feet long.

It was one of the beeswax baptismal candles prepared for the clergy at the Easter Vigil of our cathedral here in Boston. One of the friars brought one back for me that night. I've been burning it as a prayer candle in my room. I was hoping that it would make it to Pentecost, but it wasn't to be.

Prayer consumes. Prayer immolates. In offering the Paschal Candle to God at the Easter Vigil, it was presented as "the work of bees and of your servants' hands." There's the logic of the incarnation; the Word of God having become flesh in Christ renders creation fit to be transformed through immolating sacrifice to God. My little Easter candle was consumed in its work as a symbol accompanying my moments of prayer. The substance of bread and wine, as both created matter and a product of human work, is immolated in the Sacrifice of the Mass so as to re-present the one Sacrifice such that we might receive its victory over sin and death into our bodies and our lives.

This is the paschal mystery. In his own high priestly sacrifice, Jesus Christ carries in himself a disfigured creation that it might be transfigured in his victory. Abandoning ourselves to the immolation of the same Sacrifice, we find ourselves reborn for the great Easter slogan: sursum sunt quaerite, "seek the things that are above."

Surrexit Christus spes mea

I scheduled this post to appear at the time of sunrise on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem. Clever, no?

Happy Easter, everyone. May the new life of our Risen Lord well up in every heart!

I thought that since many will be denied the sequence at Sunday Mass today, even though it isn't optional, I would post it for you.








Victimae paschali laudes
immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves:
Christus innocens Patri
reconciliavit peccatores.

Mors et vita duello
conflixere mirando:
dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus.

Dic nobis Maria,
quid vidisti in via?
Sepulcrum Christi viventis,
et gloriam vidi resurgentis: 

Angelicos testes, sudarium, et vestes. 
Surrexit Christus spes mea: 
praecedet suos in Galilaeam. 

Scimus Christum surrexisse 
a mortuis vere: 
tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere. 

Amen. Alleluia!


Christians to the Paschal Victim
Offer your thankful praises!

A Lamb the sheep redeems;
Christ, who only is sinless,
Reconciles sinners to the Father.

Death and life have contended
in that combat stupendous:
The Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal.

Speak, Mary, declaring
What you saw, wayfaring.
The tomb of Christ, who is living,
The glory of Jesus' Resurrection;

Bright angels attesting,
the shroud and napkin resting.
Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he goes before you.

Christ indeed from death is risen,
our new life obtaining.
Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!

Amen. Alleluia!

Laetare Ierusalem

Yes, I wore it.

Had I a pink rose cincture, I would have worn that too.

Noctu vel Summo Mane

Daylight Savings Time begins tomorrow morning. Gone are the days when any significant number of people will come to church late; we have too many self-updating devices for that to happen anymore. I have the 8:30 a.m. Mass out in Wayland, so it will be an early morning for me.

As I go forward in this spiritual quest that my life has turned into, in this religious life and priesthood, my waking and sleeping phases have slowly moved backwards. More and more I want to get up when it's still dark, and have the early morning, the summo mane, as the Liturgy of the Hours calls it, to myself. Over the years my desired time for getting up has slowly crept backwards into the night.

This progression was somewhat interrupted during my three years as a parish priest. In that life one has to work when regular folks have free time, such as in the evening. But since leaving the parish life for a return to full-time study three semesters ago, the creep has begun again.

That's why I love the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, not because there is more daylight at the end of the day, but because an hour of morning darkness, lost since Christmas, is restored.

It was in the obscurity of eternity that God first spoke the creation: Let there be light. It was in the silence of that same eternity that he spoke the Word, and it is in the same obscure silence that we hear it. Dark always precedes light in the spiritual order. Evening came and morning followed, the first day.

In the same way, according to both Christian tradition and traditional wisdom, the incarnate Word was born at night. The Resurrection was discovered to have occurred in the morning, making it also a nocturnal event. Despite the reluctance of pastors, annoyed and tired children and drunken worshipers, the Christmas Mass at midnight still holds the imagination. Despite many liturgical abuses and misunderstandings, the greatest liturgy of the year, the baptismal Vigil of Easter, must be celebrated entirely at night.

Maybe it's true what someone once said to me about Capuchins being frustrated Trappists. But for whatever reason, the night continues to pull me back into itself, and I get up earlier and earlier.

Vel Congruat Festo

I'm famous for not having the Christmas spirit, at least as the world conceives it. But today was an exception. After Mass I was to offer the traditional blessing of throats associated with St. Blaise. In thinking ahead about how I wanted to do this, I thought that after the final blessing I would put aside the green chasuble and stole and put on the red stole appropriate for Blaise, bishop and martyr.

Only after doing this did I realize that I ended up wearing a red stole with the festive green cincture I use for Sundays in Ordinary Time. So I felt very Christmas-y for once.

For the rubrical reference made in the title see the praenotanda of the De benedictionibus (Book of Blessings) number 37.

Exterius Ungantur

Today there arose an experience of a lovely little bit of Catholic tradition. I and two other friars were praying the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick for a certain priest. There is a striking little difference when a priest receives this sacrament, explicit in the former rubrics of Extreme Unction and still practiced, though missing from the current rite.

Everyone else is anointed on the palms, while priests are anointed on the backs of the hands.

The palms of a priest's hands already bear an anointing, which he received at his priestly ordination. Because this anointing remains even long after the material, visible signs of it may have been washed away--see this favorite old post for a reflection on that--the palms of the hands are not anointed again.

et, percutientes sibi pectus, dicunt

Thanks to the thoughtfulness and charity of reader Carl, who rescued the book from a culling at a seminary library, today I have received a 1944 Caeremoniale Romano-Seraphicum in the Capuchin use. Ironically, the bears a library stamp from our old monastery in Garrison, New York. So it has made a trip and come home.

The ceremonial is full of great stuff. Here's a fun little sample:

De pectoris percussione

Percussio pectoris, quando in sacris functionibus praescribitur, fit manu dextera aperta et extensa, digitisque simul coniunctis. Ne sit strepitosa, sed modesta, ita ut mentem et cor sincera peccatorum suorum contritione imbutum in spem divinae clementiae erigat, ac ceteros ad pietatem excitet.


On the striking of the breast

The striking of the breast, when it is prescribed in the sacred services, is to be made with the right hand open and extended, and also with the fingers joined. It is not to be noisy, but modest, that the mind be raised to hope in divine clemency and the heart be imbued with sincere contrition for its sins, and that others be aroused to piety.


Here's hoping everyone gets to pray the new and improved Confiteor on the first Sunday of Advent this year, beating their breasts in just such a spirit.

As always, translation improvements are welcome in the comments.

Usus Contrarius

In religious life and the priesthood, to call someone 'rigid' is one of the gravest accusations. One can be called rigid when his idea of his privilege to be faithful to what the Church asks and expects is interpreted by someone else as not real faithfulness at all, but rather legalism, pharisaism, obsessive compulsion, mania for control, or the symptom of some other mental pathology.

This post is an example of how I am not rigid, just in case anybody ever thought or said so.

Believe it or not, for Mass at the Poor Clares today, despite the fact that it's not what we do in the Roman rite, messes up the logic of the vesting prayers, and does not make sense in what seems to me to be the theology of sacred vesture, I...wait for it...wore the stole over the chasuble.

As we read in Redemptionis sacramentum 123:

"The vestment proper to the Priest celebrant at Mass, and in other sacred actions directly connected with Mass unless otherwise indicated, is the chasuble, worn over the alb and stole.” (GIRM 337) Likewise the Priest, in putting on the chasuble according to the rubrics, is not to omit the stole. All Ordinaries should be vigilant in order that all usage to the contrary be eradicated.

So why would I do such a thing? Because Sister Sacristan asked me nice, is very much my senior in religion, and because I new she had made the stole herself, complete with a lovely Franciscan coat of arms. So, because I'm not rigid, for the feast of St. Lawrence today, I wore Sister's Franciscan stole over the chasuble.

No doubt this post will be annoying to many readers. Some will be annoyed that I did such a thing, others that I'm bragging about it, and still others that I care about such things at all. But as one of my oldest friends in the Catholic journey used to say, "The devil is in the details, and I suspect God is to be found there too."

Audemus Dicere

I probably think about things too much, but lately I've been reflecting a little on the introduction to the Our Father at the beginning of the Communion Rite. Probably for most of us it's not a big deal, just a transitional phrase to get from one part of the Mass of to another. Some of this, at least from the point of view of the priest, probably has to do with the usual arrangement of American sacramentaries, in which the prayer after the Our Father is on the top of a new page. Since most priests know the Our Father, it is usually this page that one turns to after the doxology, and so the introductions to the Our Father are rarely consulted.

I think most of us do this introduction ad lib, or at least with some phrase that we have made habitual for ourselves, even though it's not one of those places where the rubrics allow for 'these or similar words.' I've always done this myself, with some introduction that is close to, or incorporates parts from the actual text in the sacramentary, but not following along exactly. Some of this comes from early experiences offering the Mass; as a new priest, there's a great relief in having arrived at this moment in the liturgy, and with that feeling one feels a bit more loose moving forward.

I've often said something like option A, Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us, or option D, Let us pray for the coming of the kingdom as Jesus taught us. I don't know why, but lately I've started to wonder about the theological adequacy of these statements. Maybe it's because one of the other priests here in the friary always introduces the Our Father with a version of the classic introduction: "Faithful to the Savior's command, and formed by the Word of God, we dare to say..."

What bothers me is this sense of the prayer 'that Jesus taught us' or 'the words our Savior gave us.' Yes, Jesus teaches us to pray the Our Father, but does he not also command us to offer the whole of the Mass? I worry that these introductions could import a subtle distinction between the Our Father as the prayer that is from Jesus, as opposed to the rest of the Mass.

Maybe hanging out with students has made me overly sensitive to such a thing; sometimes I perceive in them impious understandings of the faith having crept in as ordinary assumptions. I was speaking to one beginning theology student about the Old Testament. When I asked him, 'Isn't the Old Testament about Christ?' he responded that the early Christians had reinterpreted it as such. As if Christ came to exist because the 'early Christians' dreamed him up! And yet sometimes such assumptions, which belong properly to the unbelieving and confused world, can find their way unquestioned into the ordinary discourse of the theological classroom.

That's why, if I'm going to invite people to pray 'as Jesus taught us' or 'in the words our Savior gave us,' I'm going to do it before Mass begins, in reference to the whole of the prayer and sacrifice Jesus Christ gave us and commanded us to offer, including the Our Father.

In any case, this is another question that will be moot when the new translation goes into effect. There are no longer options for this moment in the Mass, only At the Savior's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say:

To Stand In Your Presence And Serve You

The other day I heard a priest mention how he doesn't speak this section of Eucharistic Prayer II as it is presented: We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you. The people are kneeling, after all (at least in the United States), so how can it make sense to say that they are standing?

I have heard this complaint a number of times over the years, and just as often I have heard the text changed to something more like be in your presence and serve you.

I'm not ranting about the changing of one little word; it seems to me like something more troubling is at work here. How is it that someone who has just let his voice work through something as deep and mysterious as consenting to let the Lord's speech pass through him to speak a little bit of bread and a cup of wine into the Body and Blood of Christ then cannot abide to speak the verb 'stand' in a metaphorical way?

After all, 'to stand' is a verb which we are constantly and routinely using in figurative and metaphorical ways, even across cultures and languages. So how is that liturgical speech, which one would hope had some preeminence among the sorts of our speaking, is not even given the benefit of the ordinary flexibility and depth of language?

I think it speaks to the standard traditionalist complaint about the loss of mystery and transcendence in the liturgy. Not that the usus antiquior is the answer; the Extraordinary Form can be celebrated in small-minded and wooden ways as well.

On the theological level, we have to remember that just because we insist on certain words as a way to guarantee that we fall within the window of orthodoxy, it doesn't mean that the referents of these words are precisely defined. I know that I have to say that the Blessed Trinity is three persons and one deity, or that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures hypostatically united, but to say exactly what these words mean is another story altogether, and a long one at that. Theological speech delineates boundaries more than it establishes what some of the other sciences would call precision.

Further, we should not shrink from symbolic or metaphorical speech in our prayer out of fear for the charge of 'it's just a symbol' or 'it's just a metaphor.' These are the complaints of those who live in a reduced and small reality, in a world in denial of the spiritual. As any reflective person knows, symbols and metaphors can be extremely powerful.

In any case, such priests will be happy with the new translation, which resolves their difficulty, though probably without meeting their complaint: ...giving thanks that you have held us worthy to be in your presence and minister to you.

Praecinge Me, Domine, Cingulo Pulcherrimo

I received these lovely cinctures in the mail today, a gift from Paul of the Communio blog, which you should also read.


Of course a cincture as a liturgical vestment is not the same thing as the cord that forms part of the Franciscan habit, but I couldn't help thinking of one of my favorite quips from the Franciscan tradition, from Salimbene, a chronicling friar in the middle to late thirteenth century. As quoted in Dominic Monti's St. Bonaventure's Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order:

"Salimbene, recounting the lack of discipline in the Order in his youth, remarks: 'Some of these brethren did not even wear the proper cord of the friars, but chose a fancy one with colored threads and intricate knots. And happy was he who thought he had the prettiest one."

Laetare Ierusalem, et Conventum Facite

By chance or Providence I have been called to offer Mass this coming Sunday for a weekend gathering of our candidates for the Order. I've had far too long to incubate this homily, and it's edging towards the outrageous in how I imagine it.

It includes, so far:

The story of my Dad imitating and mocking the homily given at my temporary profession of vows

A famous insult from one of our friars, which bitingly plays on the distinction between being a 'poor religious' in the sense of evangelical poverty and a 'poor religious' in the sense of having delusions of adequacy

An amusing and telling complaint of a former girlfriend about my entrance into religious life


Fortunately for readers of this blog, this isn't the kind of homily that gets written down, in the spirit of the sage advice of one of my Jesuit teachers:

"It's best not to think.

"If you think, don't speak.

"If you speak, don't write.

"If you write, don't be surprised."

Ad Te Levavi Animam Meam

From various excited tweets I learn this morning of the release of the proper prayers for the Masses of Advent and Christmas in the new English translation. You can check them out here.

I admit that some of them seem a little awkward, but for the most part, at first glance, I like them and look forward to praying them. Then again, I'm someone who has become accustomed to conducting a significant part of his liturgical life in Latin (through the use of the Liturgia Horarum for those parts of the Divine Office we don't pray in common in my community), so I realize that the ways the prayers are structured in English may be more comfortable for me than it will be for some others. There are lots of little things that might throw off someone who had either lost his familiarity with the Latin or never encountered it in the first place, e.g. not thinking of proprium de tempore when they see "Proper of Time," some priests may not recognize that this is what we have called in English the "Proper of Seasons."

On the whole, I'm really looking forward to this. I appreciate in particular how the in the unity of has been restored to the prayers, and how certain rubrics have been updated, e.g. not 'Mass at Midnight' but simply 'At Mass during the Night.'

Aperiat ei Dominus Paradisi Ianuam

One of the graces of this winter break has been time to reflect and journal for myself on my transition from parish ministry back into full-time study, along with my move back into the world of the student brothers still completing their initial formation in the Order.

Some of the interior challenges and struggles have been pretty intense. I'm still not at peace with how I am managing all of them. Thus, I have tried to make sure I remember and pray gratefully for all of the blessings and freedoms that my new situation has also brought. One of them is the ability to promptly offer Mass for our brethren who are recently deceased.

When a friar dies in my province of the Capuchin Order, each priest left on earth is supposed to offer a Mass for the deceased brother. This is easily accomplished by concelebrating at his funeral, but one can't always get to funerals. The parish where I worked was the same church in which our brothers' funerals were celebrated, but since I usually served as MC, I couldn't concelebrate.

As a parish priest, I found it somewhat difficult to find a time to offer these Masses for our deceased brothers. The parish had a very strong culture of individual Mass intentions, and there was never a scheduled Mass without one. Sometimes it would take me quite a while to find a day on which I was free to offer these Masses for deceased friars. I remember one spell when a few of our friars died not far apart from each other (we do everything as a group) when it took me about six months to clear out my queue of outstanding Mass intentions.

This is all different in my current assignment. I have scheduled Mass obligations on just three days a week, so I have plenty of opportunity to offer Mass for other intentions. So it's a beautiful blessing to have a morning like this one, a ferial day in Ordinary Time (a feria of the iv class, as they used to say) when I can not only offer Mass for one of our recently deceased brothers, but put on violet (we don't have black) and do so with a proper Mass for the dead.

The deceased was Fr. Ellis Zimmer, one of those friars whom you meet and just know he has found the secret to spiritual peace and joy. Requiescat in pace.